Soneela Nankani

"The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters--Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia--were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish:...

"After living in the US for years, Maneka Roy returns home to India to mourn the loss of her mother and finds herself in a new world. The booming city of Hrishipur where her father now lives is nothing like the part of the country where she grew up, and the more she sees of this new, sparkling city, the more she learns that nothing--and no one--here is as it appears. Ultimately, it will take an unexpected tragic event for Maneka and those around her...

"Agatha Arch's life shatters when she discovers her husband in their backyard shed in flagrante delicto, giving the local dog walker some heavy petting. Suddenly, Agatha finds herself face-to-face with everything that frightens her... and that's a loooooong list. Agatha keeps those she loves close. Everyone else, she keeps as far away as possible. So she's a mystery to nearly everyone in her New England town. To her husband, she's a saucy, no-BS writer....

Publisher Annotation: Maya dreams of working in magazines. But as the daughter of garlic farmers, her path is set: it's off to Cow Camp instead. But when she ends up in the New York City area and realizes her cousin's girlfriends works at Maya's favorite magazine - Fierce - an opportunity falls in her lap to intern. It's her dream job, and she can't pass it up, even if means disappointing her family and lying to her parents. The only problem? Maya...

"Accidentally sabotaging an up-and-coming local band, music fanatic Liana Sarkar makes it her mission to secretly undo the damage she's caused, but when she falls for the lead singer, she finds it harder to hide the truth"--

From the international bestselling author of Secret Daughter and The Golden Son comes a poignant, unforgettable novel about a family's growing apart and coming back together in the wake of tragedy. The Olander family enjoys the best that life can offer. Though Keith and Jaya come from very different backgrounds-she is the cultured daughter of an Indian diplomat, he grew up in middle-class Philadelphia-they have built a strong and successful marriage...

A Bangladeshi orphan haunted by her parents' murders moves in with family members in Brooklyn until a fateful coming-of-age summer when her Islamic runaway cousin and she confront painful family secrets.

When an earthquake hits, nine men and women of diverse ages and backgrounds are trapped in an Indian consulate. Cameron, an African American Vietnam vet, takes charge, striving to keep them safe. College student Uma, who brought along The Canterbury Tales to read while waiting for clerk Malathi and her boss Mangalam to process her papers, suggests that they each tell an important story from their lives. Their tales of heartbreak and revelation are...

A flight from New Delhi to New York. Two strangers, seat 7A and seat 7B, who have nothing in common. Absolutely nothing. Except they are both hoping the seat next to theirs remains empty. It doesn't. Mid-flight turbulence and infant incontinence forces them to interact, the cool Wall Street guy and the mom with the drool-stained sweater and ordinary aspirations. Blistering wit, opposing views, and some unexpectedly poignant admissions keep them addictive,...

"To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time," recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. "They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships." Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking...